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Thats what I was thinking, just try out a small account and see how things go.
Persistence! Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not ... nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not ... Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not ... The world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent! Calvin Coolidge
I've been using NT for several years now. Like any other platforms, there are issues. Some minor, some major. I started with TradeStation several years ago, which was good but expensive, especially compared with NT.at the time. I purchase the "life time" which I thought was the best way to go for me. The new format and changes for the portal is different, ( not crazy about it) , but it works. I use NT continuum as my data and broker. Haven't issues there. I went back awhile ago and downloaded Tradestation primarily to get unadjusted continuous contracts to better see true levels of supply and demand and to compare with with NT8's levels. There are other things for comparisons on TS that I can't do with NT, in short, I don't see (for me) any real issues regarding what NT 8 has become. No real complaints regarding their support, least nothing that would make me quit NT8. Indicators and "add on's" work well, But I only use them for support when needed, because I'm a Supply/Demand trader .
Dimitrios
I have been using Ninjatrader for 6 years and been a trader for 30 years. I am in the process of migrating away from ninja to Sierra Charts.
My experience with NT is not good. I bought the lifetime license to get the orderflow pkg and am severely disappointed. The order flow pkg is woefully inadequate as it doesnt have even the basic functionality available for order flow. Basically, the Orderflow pkg is worthless. Also, NT hasnt provided any updates to their orderflow pkg since I bought it 6 years ago.
Additionally, After speaking to numerous expert programmers that are also traders. I am told that the NT programming architecture is poorly designed which results in many performance issues with NT including crashes, hangups, problems with the order interface panel etc.
This was not an easy decision to ditch NT. I have literally almost 10k in add ons I purchased in the last 6 years. But, after having issues almost on a weekly basis, I finally made the leap.
I predict that NT will rapidly fall out of favor as my experience is not unique among traders. I DO NOT recommend NinjaTrader
BTW, Sierra Charts is advanced and has a steep learning curve but it is solid as a rock.
I have finally ditched Multicharts after horrible instability in the past year, crushes, ( 10 Gigs + of crush reports) no customer support to speak off ( just a run around of uploading crush reports), and basically the worst experience imaginable. The Easy language programming is the only one I can do, so it was a hard choice to let go. I went back to Ninja Trader 7 first and only about a month ago updated to NT8. I find the order flow tools and the Equivolume charting to be a game changer for me. I have experienced numerous issues with NT 6 and 7 years ago after updates, and they always seem to fix the issues eventually. At this time I use the NT8 8.0.27. front end and a different broker and have had no issues so far and hope that stays this way. No plans to update for as long as possible. If need be I can go back to NT7 but will miss the order flow tools. Yes, I understand I can get better add-ons if I pay for a 3 rd party developer, but the "basics included" package is all I know and need.
I tried Sierra charts 3 times and could not get past the learning curve. Is seems to me it was fashioned after some kind of psychological torture tool from A Clockwork Orange (1971). I have tried 2 or 3 other platforms and none measured up to NT in terms of simplicity and basic functionality. So, to date I am finding NT7 or NT8 to be the only trading platform I really really like and also the only trading platform I can actually feel good using and most importantly refine my chart experience/ trade executions via data replay.
I am so sorry many traders rush into updating the well working platform and become the unwitting beta testers. That is not ok, and ALL updates should be beta tested by volunteers and maybe credited some kind of a gift in some form for the service.
I recently read (i think in investopedia) that think or swim, interactive brokers and schwab were tops. IAB for day traders (frequent trades). Tasty Trade for options. You can also google best brokers.
The last 3 times I tried to get NT support I received a message that they were unable to help me because they didnt have enough support personnel. NT8 has gone downhill and is an unstable platform.
I am an extremely technical trader, and use the NT8 platform to host a very complex interactive strategy, written in C#, which uses Unmanaged (very close to raw) Order Management from a Co-located Dedicated 6 Core Xeon 32gb server in Chicago. So I am very demanding as concerns performance and multi-threaded programmability.
My NT8 platform instances are running on the dedicated server; which is 1 millisecond ping time from the Aurora exchanges.
Having pushed performance and functionality as hard as possible for 2.5 years now; I can say with some confidence that NT8 is the premier "hardcore" programmable retail platform; and there's almost nothing that can compete with it.
I have no use for Mobile access; nor Web-based access which is being introduced lately; but I realize they need to do it for "marketing purposes".
My code can execute a Market Order from initiation to Fill in under 10 milliseconds, via the CQG live connection. Sometimes under 5 milliseconds.
Pulling in the Rithmic Paper Trading market data feed, I am able to process well over 1000-1500 Market Depth Update events PER SECOND, and develop analytics on 160 Price Tier levels on each of Bid and Ask sides of the market in real time. I use the NQ/MNQ or ES/MES pairs only, with the micro and emini contracts feeding in simultaneously.
At the same time, the Order Entry system is able to trigger within milliseconds on specific signals; and submit limit orders with a turnaround time of around 20 milliseconds or less.
Our latencies with a Rithmic Paper Trading feed (e.g. Apex or LeeLoo, etc) using the event timestamps; indicate that we are about 20-30 msecs behind the creation of the market events incoming.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that NT8 is without doubt the most powerful and reliable retail platform available. Now, if you're writing entire systems from Scratch, and do not wish to rely upon the great functionality of NT8's charting, etc..... then you might be able to do faster/better; but that would be an immense development task.
From a highly technical perspective, there isn't a more powerful platform available; and if you are willing to co-locate to a dedicated server; and project a control user interface remotely to your home office location, but allow the server side (NinjaTrader plus Strategy code) to make autonomously, the actual triggering decisions, then you have a highly reliable and super-fast system for a fairly inexpensive and "ordinary" retail trading platform....
I realize few traders are concerned with this level of coding and performance; and are just users of charts, making manual trades, from their home office desktops which are perhaps hundreds of milliseconds away from the exchanges. That may be OK for your trading approach, but it doesn't fit in with my tactics.....
Please don't degrade resources spent on engineering of NT8 in favor of Web trading or Mobile trading; is all I would ask...
As for the NinjaTrader Brokerage, I have no issues with it for my purposes, and I do wish that the NT8 and successor platforms were available for a much wider range of brokers; but I understand that they are leveraging their superior technologies, and that is their right to do so as a business decision.
For anyone using this or any other thread to try to evaluate whether NT is right for them, I would point out that there are positive as well as negative experiences, and that in the last analysis a trader can only try something for themselves to see if it is right for them. The purpose of these threads is to give traders a place to discuss their experiences, and everyone's experience is welcome, positive or negative. Hopefully they will all contribute and lead to progress.
There is also the fact that NT recently had a major version rollout, which always brings change and change is always inherently upsetting. Also, this is the internet, and complaints will always tend to predominate. I do think we should cut them a little slack as they move through the initial phases of their rollout and responding to their users' issues. It is inevitable that there are issues that need to be addressed with anything new.
But in my experience at least, NT has been around for a long time and has done a good job. It is not perfect, but then nothing is, and it may not be for everyone. This is something for the trader to evaluate according to their own priorities and criteria.
I used NT from version 6.5 through 8.0, and I was happy with it. I have moved elsewhere, for my own reasons, which I have discussed elsewhere on the forum. But I would not have a problem using them again.
Again, as with everything, you mileage may vary.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
You know, I spend a lot of time trying to get my points down just the way I want them. And then you come along and just say what I mean: "haters gonna hate."
Not everyone who has a negative point of view on something is a hater, and not every negative assessment is just hating -- but yeah, you got what I meant.
Now, if someone's got a real problem, then bring it up. And hold NinjaTrader's (or whoever it is) feet to the fire until they fix it. But stop all the damn complaining and add something worthwhile to the world.
That's all.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
